This invention generally relates to stretcher frames used by artists to mount canvas and other fabrics thereon prior to working on such fabrics.
Painters have traditionally mounted their canvases on rectangularly shaped wood frames by pulling the canvas tautly over the edge of the wooden frame and then tacking or stapling the edge of the canvas to the back side of the wood frame. Similar frames have also been used to mount silk and nylon fabric for silk screening.
Unfortunately, the tacks and staples tend to damage the fabric when mounting and removing the fabric from the frame. As a result, once the fabric was mounted to the stretcher frame, the mounting tends to be permanent because of the inconvenience of removing the tacks and staples in order to remove the fabric from the frame.
In those instances, such as in art classes, where the wooden frames may be used repeatedly, removing the canvas and other fabric can be very burdensome and inconvenient.
Many different types of stretcher frames have been proposed over the years with the prime purpose thereof to eliminate the need for tacking and stapling the fabric to the frame. The following list of patents disclose some of these prior devices. The list is intended to be exemplary not exhaustive on the subject.
______________________________________ U.S. Pat. No. 2,455,640 Ashbaugh December 7, 1948 U.S. Pat. No. 3,841,008 Cusick October 15, 1974 U.S. Pat. No. 3,950,869 Samarin April 20, 1976 U.S. Pat. No. 4,409,749 Hamu October 18, 1983 ______________________________________
One characteristic common to all of the above described prior art stretcher frames, other than the conventional rectangularly shaped wooden frame, is that they have not met with much commercial success. They have either been too inconvenient or too expensive or both. As a result, painters and other artists, for the most part, still use the rectangularly shaped wooden frames which have been used for hundreds of years.
There has been a long felt need for stretcher frame assemblies which are both simple to use and reuse and still be inexpensive. The present invention satisfies this need.